Marico, one of India’s leading consumer product companies in the global beauty and wellness segment, had established their Parachute Kalpavriksha Foundation (PKF) ON World Coconut Day in 2017. The focus of the Parachute Kalpavriksha Foundation was on 3 principles. The first being enabling higher crop yield, the others being training farmers to be self-capacitated in their farms and imparting training to them on scientific and research based agricultural practices.
The Foundation has plans of covering over 4 lakh acres of farmland and enrolling over 1 lakh farmers by FY25. By FY26 the aim is to generate 1000 crore incremental farm income.
The PKF programme has helped over 81,000 farmers since its inception by improving their awareness on disease, water, nutrition and pest management for coconut cultivation. The optimization of resource has resulted in an increase in income and the enrolled farmers have seen a growth in productivity in FY23 by 16%.
With the realisation that not all farmers have the purchasing power of farm equipment and machinery to adopt modern and sustainable farming methods, PKF launched four Agri-Business Centres. This enables farmers to hire high quality farm machinery, technical assistance, labour and equipment. The ABC or the Agri Business Centre enables farmers to obtain farm services and farm care inputs too.
Through ABC, a common platform for agri business ventures and farmers has been created. Local entrepreneurs helped establish agri-ventures and they services such as brush cutter, power tiller, sale of inputs along with labour services at affordable rates. ABC has benefitted over 1600 farmers in the FY23 by enhancing their productivity and income.
Chief Legal Officer & Group General Counsel and Secretary of the CSR Committee, Marico Limited, Amit Bhasin said, that the main focus of the launch of the Parachute Kalpavriksha Foundation was to enhance the income of farmners and improve their livelihoods by improving their yield. He went on to add that the launch of the Agri-Business centre was to make a positive impact in the lives of the farmers. He said that they would not only looking at strengthening the farmers, but providing them better farm resources locally. This would also motivate the local entrepreneurs to establish their new businesses in the local economy.
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